Copyediting Palestine

Media Bias in Journalism Style Guides

Abstract

Introduction. The purpose of journalistic style guides is to provide media practitioners with guidance on language to convey a neutral and objective presentation of information. This paper investigates thematic style guides published with a focus on Palestine and analyzes how these style guides construct media bias. Literature Review. In the literature reviewed a structural media bias against Palestinians that favors Israeli narratives is documented in research as an integral part of anglophone mainstream media through the reproduction of Orientalism, Zionist narratives, and anti-Palestinian racism. Methodology. A comparative content analysis was conducted on four thematic style guides, sampling common terms through a grounded theory approach. Results. The results show similarities and differences in the style guides’ definitions, sourcing, and explanations of key terms related to Palestine and its historical, legal, and geographic contexts. Discussion. The style guides notably differ in their content with some perpetuating anti-Palestinian bias in various implicit and explicit ways, such as Nakba denial, questioning Palestinian history, and reproducing Israeli sources and narratives. Conclusions. Our analysis concludes that anti-Palestinian bias and racism are an integral part of some anglophone newsroom policies and practices as implemented in style and editorial guidelines. Thematic style guides on Palestine thus can further perpetuate colonial conquest and anti-indigenous violence.